Continuous Becoming: Moving toward Mastery

Victoria P. Hankey and Dawn L. Ryan, Column Editors

94 En glish Journal 103.3 (2014): 94– 97

A Master Teacher’s Responsibility to the FutureWilliam H. BillingsMethodist UniversityFayetteville, North Carolinabillings@methodist.edu

Since the dawn of the third mil-lennium, many of America’s lead-ing scientists and futurists have produced a wave of articles con-taining predictions about the future, some good and some bad. Whether these predictions come true will depend largely on the “millennials”— those born since 1982— and the teachers thereof. One important responsibility of teachers of “millennials” is to think beyond the present. Master teachers must engage students in thinking, acting on, and planning for their futures, which have yet to be defined.

The following is a sampling of some future “probabilities” described in these articles:

• Urbanandenvironmentalpressures will drive people from suburbia and the country back to urban cores.

• Asharpdeclineinoilsupplieswill trigger a sudden economic collapse.

• “Smartdrugs”willshaveyearsoff the human brain’s age.

To ensure the likelihood that millennials make good choices and help build a better world, En glish teachers should focus attention on the critical issues that lie ahead. One method is to require students to read what experts are predict-ing for the future and then create their own future autobiographies.

• Telecommutingwillallowemployees to work from home on their own schedules.

• Self-drivingcarsandrobo-cabs(available on demand) will replace owner- driven vehicles. Bicycles will be used widely for short trips.

• PrivateentrepreneursinAmer-ica will routinely conduct manned spaceflights to the International Space Station and to other planets.

• Americanswillachieveakindof immortality as it becomes feasible to upload human minds into supercomputers. (Anft, Carlson, Dudley, and Manjoo, 61)

Many scientists and futurists believe that we earthlings must change the way we live, or Earth will not survive. Just as novelists, poets, playwrights, and short- story writers have addressed life and death issues in the past, today’s futurists are addressing issues that they believe threaten the survival of the human race and our planet, such as global warming, political terrorism, overpopulation, nuclear proliferation, and air and water pol-lution. In their efforts to improve the odds of our planet surviving, master teachers should challenge today’s students to change their way of living and believe that they can be part of a future solution.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler pro-posed in his book, Future Shock, that students at all grade levels, elementary through college, be required to picture themselves and “important others” in their lives as they would be 10 or 20 years into the future. Toffler said this activity was needed to avoid “future shock,” which he defined as “the shattering stress and dis-orientation that we induce in indi-viduals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time” (2). “By submitting these to class discussion,” he added, “by com-paring different assumptions in them, contradictions in the child’s own projections can be identified and examined” (426).

Toffler decried the fact that sci-ence fiction was generally held in low regard as a branch of litera-ture and said it should be viewed

En glish teachers should focus

attention on the critical issues

that lie ahead.

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Continuous Becoming: Moving toward Mastery

Figure 1), 14 articles about the future, the Vonnegut short story, and a sample “future autobiogra-phy” written by a college student. The fledgling authors were told to craft a discernible plot and theme

would write first- person, journal- style narratives describing three days in their own futures set 20, 40, and 60 years hence.

Third, students were given a two- page set of instructions (see

as a kind of “sociology of the future.” “Our children should be studying Arthur C. Clarke, Wil-liam Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Sheckley,” he noted. “They [these writers] can lead young minds through an imaginative exploration of the jungle of political, social, psycho-logical, and ethical issues that will confront these children as adults” (Toffler 425). In an effort to facili-tate thinking about the future, I designed the following project.

After reading Future Shock, I asked my eighth- grade En glish students in Chesterfield County, Virginia, to write future autobiog-raphies, to imagine and describe two days in their future: one day set 10 years ahead and the other day set 20 years out. To prepare the students for this task, I gave them a Ray Bradbury short story and an excerpt from a modern autobiography that we read and discussed. The future autobiog-raphies penned by these students were a revelation, exposing the students’ dreams and personal values and generating optimism about their future prospects. Over the last 40 years, I have given the same assignment to hundreds of En glish students, ninth graders through first- year college stu-dents, with similar results.

In the fall of 2000, I decided to again test Toffler’s idea by asking my first- year college En glish com-position students to write future autobiographies in lieu of end- of- course research papers. I designed this project to have three compo-nents. First, the students would read and react to 14 articles about the future, as well as “Harrison Bergeron,” a short story by Kurt Vonnegut. Second, the students

FiguRE 1. Future Autobiography Paper: 9– 12 pages (1,800– 2,400 words)

Your task for this paper will be to speculate about and place yourself in the future, giving your “best- case scenario” for what your world will look like 20, 40, and 60 years from now, on a specific day in 2034, 2054, and 2074. Although you will have to use your imagination when writing your future autobiography, your paper must include some of the predictions for the future now being advanced by experts in various fields. I will give you 14 articles about the future, and you must find six additional articles on your own. You must cite at least 15 articles about the future in this paper (five or more within each day you describe). Use parenthetical MLA style when quot-ing from or paraphrasing articles.

Each part of your paper will be a journal or diary entry for one day in your future. Start with the time you wake up and end with the time you go to bed. Strive for a unifying theme or central impression for each day you describe, reflecting on the significance of the things that happened to you during that day.

As you review each day, mention:

1. Your age and where you live

2. Your family and close friends: people you meet or work with regularly

3. Your job or educational status

4. Your appearance and style of dress

5. Your favorite sports, hobbies, or recreational activities

6. A TV newscast or front page of a daily newspaper giving the state of the world and the country and the area in which you live: the economy, political situation, environment, health and scientific advances, war vs. peace, etc.

7. The greatest obstacle or challenge you face; how religion or prayer helps you cope with life’s challenges

8. Some accomplishments you’re proud of; your dreams and goals for the immediate future

Use subheads at the beginning of each part of your future autobiography, giving the month, day, and year, followed by a colon (:) and a descriptive phrase that sums up what type of event(s) you have imagined for yourself. Example: January 30, 2034: Family Greets New Arrival. You may describe any day of any month in 2034, 2054, and 2074. In the past, many students have chosen their birthdays for each of the future years they describe; this seems logical because birthdays often force us to think about where we’ve been and where we’re going. Give your paper an original title.

You will conclude your paper by writing your own one- page obituary, giving the basic details of your life (see the example paper), or you may write “some thoughts about life” to be read at your wake or memorial service OR you may write “a final letter” to your surviving family members.

Immediately after your obituary or final thoughts, attach a “Works Cited” page, listing the bibliographic information on all the articles that you cited or used as background information in your future autobiography.

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A Master Teacher’s Responsibility to the Future

2022, precipitating national and worldwide economic collapses, riots, mass chaos, and finally, the loss of America’s electric power grid. This student identified himself as an FBI agent who had purchased 50 acres of farmland in 2020, where he and his wife were trying to become entirely self- sufficient. Setting his death in 2072 at the age of 84, this auto-biographer wrote the following to be read at his funeral and printed in his obituary:

Embrace the lesson we have learned in this struggle and have faith that our children will have a better future. Remember that death is the only certainty of life, and life is what we make of it.

After reading papers like these, it seems that Alvin Toffler was right. Writing these papers does two important things for stu-dents. First, it encourages them to be creative and take individ-ual responsibility for their own futures, and second, it helps them avoid “future shock.” Moreover, these papers have shown that many “millennials” are ready, willing, and able to embrace the changes needed to ensure the sur-vival of our planet.

As a baby boomer I was taught that each individual is unique and has the power to make a positive difference in the world. Although time is short, En glish teachers are in a great position to encourage millions of young students to con-sider some of the problems facing Earth and its inhabitants.

As you consider new ways to challenge yourself and your students, make future autobi-ographies part of your teaching methodology. This process will

Students were required to sub-mit first drafts of Day One, which I read, corrected, and returned. I decided later to require students to do some research on their own: to find and cite four articles about the future, in addition to the 14 articles and the short story I had given them to read. This expanded the bibliography to a total of 19 articles and one short story. For conclusions to their autobiogra-phies, I asked the students to write their own obituaries, listing some major achievements in their lives, along with some lessons they had learned and some “final thoughts” they wished to leave behind.

The following are excerpts from future autobiographies writ-ten in 2011 and 2012 by first- year En glish Composition students at MethodistUniversity.Theyattestto the value of this assignment for making millennials think and write about current problems that will affect their futures.

In the fall of 2011, a nontradi-tional (older) student described a day from 2071, when she would be 78 years of age. She said she would be living on Mars, having been forced to move there from Earth to help “conserve” Earth’s dwindling resources. She described visiting a technological exposition with her grandson and looking at arti-facts from 2011: a spy humming-bird, electronic reading glasses, a “smell- vision” TV set, and a car that would park itself.

In the fall of 2012, a 24- year- old male wrote of a day in 2032 when “the lights went out . . . and the world ended as I knew it . . . caused by a long stream of igno-rance and greed.” He reported that America’s deficit had sky-rocketedto90percentofGDPby

as they related the events of each day, while also describing where they lived, immediate family and close friends, their job, their style of dress, a favorite sport or hobby, a major news story from a TV newscast or webcast or a daily newspaper, an obstacle or chal-lenge they faced, and something significant that they had accom-plished that day.

I further suggested that stu-dents make each day in their future autobiographies coincide with their birthdays, occasions when humans traditionally take stock of their lives and make plans for the future. In their stories of each day (three to four typed pages), students were asked to cite at least five “probabilities” or predictions mentioned in the articles about the future that they had read. Each citation could be a direct quote, paraphrase or sum-mary, and would follow paren-thetical MLA style.

Dynamic Graphics/Thinkstock

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Works Cited

Anft, Michael, Scott Carlson, David Dudley, and Farhad Manjoo. “Our World in the Year 2020.” AARP: The Magazine. November/December 2010:87.Print.

Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam,1990.Print.

Editor’s Note

The author will share with anyone who requests them his future autobiography list of readings. He can be reached via regular mail at Methodist University,5400 Ramsey Street, Fayetteville, NC 28311 and by phone at (910) 630- 7086. His email address is billings@methodist.edu.

enhance your craft as you learn in novel ways. While asking your stu-dents to read about, think about, and write about the future, you will be fulfilling your responsibil-ity as a master teacher to encourage the next generation to be better stewards of our world.

William H. “Bill” Billings is an En glish instructor at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He wrote From Cotton Field to University: A History of Methodist University, chronicling the first 50 years of the school. In 2009, Billings became a full- time member of the En glish faculty at Methodist University.

Poem Written at Subway

I teach En glish but reach deep to ink words onto yearbook pages and the 478 assignments I will grade this week. 167 of 180 9 period days having lapsed, 39 minutes a pop, 118 students, 29 desks, Room 310. Language is a sauce with parts indistinct.

I am a poet sinkingin a swamp, scanningthe bank for numbers to climb toward my life: today is 6.6.12., the first 2equaling the year, my oldest 2 students 19 and 19, me 38. I have 1 wife, 2 children, a 12- inch sub with avocado, $10.59

for the meal. 23 minutes until class begins again. I am 6 feet tall, 205 pounds, possess 4 ventricles that flood when she laughs— 9 years our 2 hands clasped, 2- lips

tiptoeing. 1 shade of marmalade sprouts from our boys’ heads, 6½ and 4, 2 cats on

their bunks, 9 planets on the ceiling, 44 presidents on the door, 207 world flags scotch- taped to every wall we own. I am coming back— only 7 minutes to the beach, 55 to Manhattan and 1 to the backyard, past the trellis where 37 roses point my way to the filterI backwash when

the gauge hits 15. Avocado was a great call. And yes, IstillcallPlutoaplanet.I can tally films and national parks and basil shoots from here, stress ticking down to 0, inviting me, my family— maybe all of us— to add together the blessings we can count on.

—MattPasca©2014byMattPasca

Matt Pasca is an award- winning high school En glish teacher whose poetry has appeared in more than a dozen journals and nine print anthologies. His first book, A Thousand Doors (2011, JB Stillwater), was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Email mattpasca@verizon.net or visit http://www.mattpasca.com.

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